


Never Underestimated

by Aurae



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Age Difference, Exchange Assignment, F/F, First Kiss, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Canon, X-Ship 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-06 09:32:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17342867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aurae/pseuds/Aurae
Summary: The battle helmet and the armor made the leader of the Cloud-Riders fearsome to behold.Jyn Erso was impressed by the effect but unafraid of it.





	Never Underestimated

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ChronicBookworm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChronicBookworm/gifts).



> Includes ancillary material from the _Solo_ movie novelization by Mur Lafferty and _Rebel Rising_ by Beth Revis. Familiarity with these two books is not needed for this story.

The battle helmet and the armor made the leader of the Cloud-Riders fearsome to behold.

Jyn Erso was impressed by the effect but unafraid of it. Even at the tender age of eleven years old, she’d seen enough of the galaxy, and become jaded enough, to know that an intimidating, theatrical façade such as that worn by Enfys Nest was meant to distract, to conceal. If you’re busy being impressed by a mask, you’re too busy to wonder what might be behind it. The truth of the face which lay behind the mask could be any number of possibilities, but the one thing it definitely wouldn’t be was _fearsome_.

She was right. But in other respects, she was completely wrong. Later, on hindsight, she supposed she had expected a weak face, an elderly face, or perhaps a pitiably mutilated one.

She had not expected a human woman’s face, sweetly vulnerable yet resolute, so young that many beings would treat that face with condescension, as if it belonged to a little girl, a mere child like Jyn herself, and not an infamous gang leader.

She had not expected Enfys Nest to be beautiful. Achingly, heart-stoppingly beautiful, the first beautiful thing Jyn had seen since…since…well, she couldn’t remember how terribly long it had been. Before the Empire had taken her parents from her, that was certain.

None of this showed on Jyn’s face when Enfys removed her battle helmet. She’d already learned to hide her feelings from the world. To Enfys, her face would have been impassive, inscrutable, unmoved.

Yet somehow, Enfys _was_ moved. “They’re going to underestimate you. Make them regret it,” she told Jyn with the cruel kindness of a determined survivor.

“They?”

“Everyone. Make them regret it.”

This was the voice of experience talking. The galaxy had undoubtedly made a habit of underestimating Enfys Nest, too—to the galaxy’s peril—and Jyn knew it wouldn’t be the last time.

Jyn Erso, however, would never underestimate Enfys Nest. And she never forgot her, either.

***

So of course Jyn recognized Enfys as soon as she emerged from her room one morning.

The Cloud-Riders had come to Saw’s secret base on Wrea. There’d been a bad job, apparently, and the survivors—too few! too few!—needed a safe place to rest and regroup.

Saw never offered anything purely out of the goodness of his heart. There’d be a price to pay later, Jyn was sure, and she could only hope that the Cloud-Riders had what it would take to satisfy him.

Enfys was older, of course, and her face had become longer, more vulpine, her cheekbones sharper, more defined. The constellation of freckles scattered across her creamy brown skin seemed to have faded somewhat, but her hair, gathered into a single, simple tail at the base of her neck, was the same fiery burst of red. She was, in short, still beautiful. So, so beautiful.

And as for Jyn, well, Jyn was older too, naturally, five years older. She’d grown wiry and strong from Saw’s relentless hand to hand combat training, and she held herself with the confidence of someone who was not under any circumstances to be underestimated.

Enfys’s gaze swept over Jyn’s sinewy limbs, curled around the curves of her hips, her waist, the soft swell of her breasts, and finally settled on her face. Those caf-brown eyes missed nothing. Jyn felt the intensity of their scrutiny and blushed hotly.  

In order to redirect the tension that was building between them, they ended up going outside to face off in the training yard. Enfys wielded her deadly electroripper staff, whereas Jyn carried only her two trusty truncheons.

She wasn’t worried.

They circled each other warily at first, looking for tells, each taking the other’s measure. Enfys’s staff had the longer range, Jyn knew, and that was before taking into consideration the energy ribbon at its tip which could incapacitate opponents with a single strike _or_ the kinetite charge at its base which could detonate on impact with the ground and create a shockwave. The bottom line? Jyn would need to get inside Enfys’s guard. The electroripper staff would make that a challenge.

The first few passes were merely feints. Jyn kept her body posture defensive and her occasional opportunistic attacks aimed high, concentrating on the head and shoulders. Enfys’s staff, though exceedingly dangerous, was slower and clumsier than Jyn’s truncheons, and she planned to take full advantage of that.

Enfys wouldn’t expect a head on attack from a smaller, weaker opponent…so that’s exactly what Jyn did. She ran right at her, her fastest sprint, and when Enfys detonated the kinetite charge at the base of her staff, Jyn leapt clear over the fast-spreading shockwave. At the peak of her jump, Jyn threw her right-handed truncheon in a wild, spinning arc straight at Enfys’s face. Then, as Enfys raised her staff to parry the throw, she dropped to the ground and straight into a skid, knees bent and body low, her left-handed truncheon knocking Enfys to the ground as she sailed by.

Jyn’s short truncheon was poised to crack Enfys’s skull wide open before Enfys had a chance to recover.

“That was very impressive fighting. I may have underestimated you,” Enfys said, breathing hard. She straightened her disheveled clothing. “I promise never to do that again.”

“Promise accepted!” Jyn said, holding her hand out and grinning.

Enfys mirrored that grin as she took Jyn’s proffered hand. Jyn helped her back onto her feet.

They were totally relaxed in each other’s company after that, like they’d been friends forever. When night fell, they retired to Jyn’s room and sat on her bed, huddled together, talking earnestly about everything and nothing.

“I was sixteen, same as you are now, and her death practically tore me apart. I can’t imagine how you’ve coped all these years, Jyn.”

They’d both lost their mothers to the Empire seven years ago, Jyn when she was nine, Enfys when she was sixteen. They had this in common. They had other things in common as well.

“But, in her death—I found my purpose. And every blow I strike against the Empire avenges her death anew,” Enfys concluded.

“I don’t know. We fight too, but I’m not sure what we really, truly accomplish.” Jyn thought of Saw and his Partisans, the extremity of some of their methods, the violence, the secrecy. She thought about how little has changed in the galaxy due to their actions. “I just…I just wish I could do more. I feel like she died for nothing.” Jyn thought of her father, his return to a life of research. It was like the research, like the Empire, and not his wife and child, were his true family. She fingered the kyber crystal around her neck absentmindedly. Enfys watched her do it. Jyn didn’t know if Enfys understood its significance.

Nonetheless, Enfys nodded. She gazed deeply into Jyn’s eyes, and Jyn gazed deeply back. Enfys’s brown eyes had tiny flecks of green jadeite in them, Jyn realized. Gently, Enfys wrapped her hand around Jyn’s hand, the one clutching her mother’s crystal. The skin of her palm, rough with callouses, was comforting and warm. “At first, I thought vengeance would be enough But it’s not, you know,” Enfys said, an admission. “Revenge—it’s not enough to keep you going forever. You need to believe in a better future. You need to hope.”

“Hope!” Jyn had meant to scoff, but the word came out more as a sob instead. She missed her mother; she even missed her unfaithful father. Oh, it hurt! A gaping, howling, towering cavern of hurt in her chest. She realized, to her surprise, that she was crying.

“No, don’t cry.” Enfys drew Jyn in close and kissed away her tears.

And when Jyn, in turn, pressed a very different sort of kiss to Enfys’s lips, Enfys, oh, beautiful, flame-haired Enfys, to her eternal credit, did not tell Jyn she was only a girl and ought to wait, did not question the strength of her feelings or the surety of her heart. She did not question Jyn’s need. She did not push Jyn away.

The comfort of friendship, the fragile flower of new love—these things were not to be underestimated, either.

 

END

**Author's Note:**

> Posted to the exchange on January 27, 2019.


End file.
